Join the Hilltopper Family

Can you see yourself making a positive impact at WKU? We offer an inviting and challenging work environment, responsive to the needs of a diverse and ambitious learning community. See our open faculty and staff positions.

The WKU National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) Program
took place from 2015-2017. The program has now ended. Applications are no longer being
accepted.

Summer 2017 Research Projects

Stroke is a primary cause of severe disability and the fourth leading cause of death
(American Heart Association, 2015). After a stroke, it is imperative to stimulate
brain activity. The purpose of the proposed study is to conduct a novel intervention
that aims to enhance the physical and psychological states in a cost-effective and
personalized manner for stroke patients—pre and post-discharge—by implementing personally
selected music. This intervention amalgamates for the first time four distinct entities:
music, low-impact exercises, memory for prescribed exercises, and functional outcome
measures of balance. Two REU students will learn about stroke, clinical interventions
for stroke, Berg Balance Scale scoring, patient-interaction, participant recruitment,
longitudinal data collection, and data entry. Students will work in a hospital setting,
at Southern Kentucky Rehabilitation Hospital (http://www.skyrehab.com/).

Muscle dysmorphia is a form of body dysmorphic disorder (BDD) where people who suffer
from the disorder (mostly men) believe that their bodies have insufficient muscularity
even though many are extremely muscular, even hyper-muscular. Thus, their attitudes
and behaviors focus on increasing muscularity. There are arguments that early abuse
can lead to the development of psychopathology (see O’Hare, Shen, & Sherrer, 2015);
however, this has not been examined with muscle dysmorphia. The goal of this study
is to gain a better understanding of the relationship between experiences of abuse
and symptoms of muscle dysmorphia. Further, the study takes place both in a laboratory
context at WKU and uses a web-based experiment through Amazon's Mechanical Turk.

Examining the Development of Emotion Regulation Using a Multi-Method Approach (Faculty
Mentor: Dr. Diane Lickenbrock)

The ability to regulate emotions is a critical skill that is essential to promoting
positive developmental outcomes (Stifter et al., 2010). Cardiac physiology can be
used to index reactive and regulatory capacity (Beuchaine etal., 2008). However, research
examining how cardiac physiology (e.g., respiratory sinus arrhythmia, a measure of
parasympathetic function) in parents could affect their child’s development of emotion
regulation has only been studied at one time-point and only in mother-child interactions
(Moore et al., 2009). Father-child interactions are less studied in the literature.
The current, longitudinal study involves examining social and emotional development
across early infancy (4-, 6-, and 8-months of age). The REU student will become familiar
with research methodology used in developmental psychology research, which includes
longitudinal research designs as well as a variety of laboratory methods (i.e., questionnaires,
observational coding of behaviors, cardiac physiology).

Why are some people are better than others at learning to solve problems they have
never seen before? This study will examine relationships between factors that influence
success during novel problem-solving. Working memory capacity, the attentional resources
we have available to devote to effortful tasks, influences many types of problem-solving,
including creative problem-solving and mathematical reasoning (Lee & Therriault, 2013:
Lin & Lien, 2013). The strategies individuals choose during these tasks are also influenced
by working memory, and some strategies are more useful than others for particular
tasks (Schelble, Therriault, & Miller, 2012). Even when students are provided with
a strategy that is useful for a particular task, some students choose not to use the
helpful strategy. In this study, we will examine individual differences (in addition
to working memory capacity) that impact the strategies people choose to use during
novel tasks. The REU student will select and develop measures for the study, administer
the study to participants, code data, analyze results, and work with the faculty mentor
to draw conclusions about the results. The REU student will also have the opportunity
to select additional relevant variables of interest to investigate during this study.

What factors determine which stimuli in our environment capture our attention? In
addition to the intrinsic perceptual and emotional properties of stimuli, extrinsic
factors such as learned reward and learned predictiveness may also modulate attention.
For example, stimuli that are followed by higher rewards when selected receive more
sustained attention than those followed by low rewards (Della Libera & Chelazzi, 2009).
Likewise, stimuli that consistently predict the same outcome capture attention to
a greater degree than stimuli that are not predictive (Le Pelley, Vadillo, & Luque,
2013). The purpose of this project is to determine whether there are age differences
in the modulation of attention through learned predictiveness. REU students will assist
in all phases of the project, including using software to build a program for real-time
stimulus presentation and response measurement, data collection with both young and
older adult participants, coding and analysis of reaction time and accuracy data,
and conducting relevant descriptive and inferential statistical analyses of the data.

High levels of anti-Muslim and anti-Immigrant sentiment currently mark public discourse
in the U.S. A great deal is known about general causes of prejudice toward these and
other groups. However, less is known about how actions directed toward members from
these groups are evaluated. Evaluations of behavior (such as torture or terrorism)
as more or less acceptable are theoretically linked to both perpetrator and victim
group membership. This project investigates how people’s opinions about behaviors
differ, depending on who executes the behavior, and who the target of the behavior
is. As part of this multi-pronged investigation, a number of specific investigations
will be conducted. Two students are invited to help with 1) perceptions of behavior
acceptability, and 2) assessing infra- and dehumanization as a consequence of disliked
outgroup members’ involvement with negative behaviors. Changes in the moral values
of those evaluating these negative behaviors may also be used to investigate further
reaching implications of exposure to descriptions of these negative behaviors. Data
will be collected online, and REU students will be involved with the execution and
evaluation of the research.